


Astra, Luna, Sol

by AlphaStarr



Category: Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: Action/Adventure, F/F, Femslash Exchange 2015, Jedi, Mild Smut, Minor Character Death, Olivia!Lucina, Sci-Fi AU, Star Trek References
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-05
Updated: 2015-10-05
Packaged: 2018-04-20 02:21:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 14,796
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4769909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlphaStarr/pseuds/AlphaStarr
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <span></span>
  <br/>
  <i>She blames her mother's stupid self-help books. "Make Him Fall For You In 12 Parsecs" was the biggest load of crock she'd ever read. A parsec wasn't even a unit of time, gawds, and are you saying that making a guy fall for you has something to do with how fast your ship is? Ugh. This, Severa thinks, is why she'd mistakenly assumed dating women would be easier.</i>
  <br/>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Astra

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Icie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Icie/gifts).



> Betaed by [Phrenotobe.](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Phrenotobe) (Note added after de-anon period.)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Severa tries to convince herself that this is not a love story._

_This is not a love story_ , Severa thinks, even as her cheeks flush so hotly that they must be bright red by now. This is not--  _cannot_ \-- be a love story, because if it were, the girl would get the girl in the end and they would ride off into the sunset atop the back of a pegasus and live happily ever after.

The first matter of the issue, of course, is that the Pegasus starship series was retired years ago-- they were very fast, but incredibly high-maintenance and improved navigation technology basically made them obsolete. Only huge nerds like Cynthia even had those anymore. The second matter of the issue is Kjelle, whose knee is currently parting Severa's thighs as she kisses her, hard and deep and passionately as ever, as if she knows Severa is thinking of her lips and tongue doing the same thing further down.

(Which Severa is not thinking of, no way, except she might be just a little bit.)

Naturally, Severa cannot allow Kjelle to claim her mouth with no opposition-- she is hardly some damsel to be ravished. She duels back, her tongue pushing insistently against Kjelle's until there is a stalemate, and they break.  _This is not a love story_ , Severa thinks, even as she sucks a dark hickey into the side of Kjelle’s neck, using just this side of too-much-teeth. Her incisor snags against the skin just below Kjelle’s jaw, and though it doesn’t break skin, scratches her roughly. Vengeance, she thinks, for the bruises on her thighs from the last time they did this.

“Don’t do rough,” Kjelle breathes, and Severa doesn’t even have to look up to know that she’s wearing that painfully beautiful half-smirk half-agape expression she often takes on in moments like these. “It doesn’t suit you.”

“Excuse you,” Severa snarls back defensively, nicking Kjelle once more. “I think I know what suits me.”

“You sure? Because last I checked,” and here Kjelle gave one of her pigtails a harsh tug. “Pretty girls didn’t do rough.”

“ _Ow_ , what was that for??” Severa scowls, slipping her hands away from where she was just about to slide them under Kjelle’s shirt to rub the ache on her scalp. “If pretty girls don’t do rough, then obviously I wouldn’t like that, gawds!"

"What happened to knowing what suits you?" Kjelle asks, thumbing where her neck is purpling. "Sex is a two-way street, don't deal what you can't handle."

"Like _you_ could?" Severa raises her chin. "You can't handle me for even an hour!"

"Is that a challenge?" Kjelle narrows her eyes, and she has that _look_ , the one she gets when she's determined and excited at the same time. Severa can't help but squirm a little against the thigh in between hers, and before she knows it, her lips are on Kjelle's again.

"It's _so_ on," she breathes against Kjelle's mouth, pushing her to the sheets of the bed, slipping a hand up Kjelle's shirt and trailing her immaculately-manicured fingers over equally flawless abs.

* * *

In Severa's defense, it _does_  take an awful lot of work before Kjelle manages to get off even once, fighting Severa's attempts all the way so that nothing lines up right and ugh, that girl is just so frustrating, can't she just lay back and _enjoy_ things for once?

"Are we finished already," Kjelle exhales, and damn her for how gorgeous her heaving chest looks in the dim lighting, and how she can make even a head of mussed hair look good.

Severa, on her part, cannot answer. Her lips are so chapped and swollen that anything she could say would come out as a lisp. She is also pretty sure that twenty bottles of mouthwash could not wash the taste of Kjelle from her mouth right now.

"Good," replies Kjelle to an answer gleaned merely from Severa's glare. "My turn."

With a wicked smile, she turns the both of them over and places her lips and tongue right over Severa's clit. Hot and frustrated and strangely hot _because_ of the frustration, Severa lasts for about three seconds, her inner walls rippling with the final satisfaction, at last. Then, she realizes that she is still wearing underwear, and gods, how inconsiderate does Kjelle have to be, not even bothering to take those off of her?

What a way to harsh that post-orgasmic bliss, and Severa can't help but be reminded again that this is not a love story. The part of her that says she is a tough woman, and too jaded besides, for anything even resembling a love story tells her that she doesn't need it. None of the romantic gestures or gentle handlings or... well, anything she'd ever thought a relationship should be.

(She blames her mother's stupid self-help books. "Make Him Fall For You In 12 Parsecs" was the biggest load of crock she'd ever read. A parsec wasn't even a unit of time, gawds, and are you saying that making a guy fall for you has something to do with how fast your ship is? Ugh. This, Severa thinks, is why she'd mistakenly assumed dating women would be easier.)

"Time, fifty-two minutes and fifteen seconds," Kjelle remarks, hitting the timer on her Smartwatch. "That's eight minutes short of an hour. Making false claims, Severa?"

"Wait, you mean you were _actually timing_ that?" Severa looks at her incredulous, agape.

"You're the one who set the challenge," Kjelle is the one who looks affronted, as if Severa, of all people, is doubting the solemnity with which Kjelle takes her challenges. "I started it as soon as you dealt it. It looks like you are the one incapable of handling _me_ for an hour."

"Gawds, Kjelle," Severa pushes herself off the bed, and there goes her chance of actually having decent post-sex pillow talk. "I can't believe you! Not everything has to be a competition, you know."

"And you're sure you're not just saying that because you lost?" Kjelle gives that slightly open smirk again, and Severa just can't deal with her gorgeously plush lips and the hint of pale teeth. Especially if she's right.

Kjelle may have the pride of a shipfighter and a warrior, but Severa has the pride of a lover, and between the two, she isn't sure which one's worse.

"Ugh. Just. Forget it. I’m going back to my room, good night,” Severa huffs, pulling on her regulation uniform over the undergarments she's still wearing (thanks a _lot_ , Kjelle). 

“... and there goes the bitch fit,” Kjelle rolls her eyes. “Fine, go back to your room, you know where to find me when you're ready to admit to losing.”

“Fine!” Severa bites back, shoving herself off the bed with just a little too much force. She storms away, and it's half a miracle that the automated door actually waits for her to approach before opening... instead of retreating in fear from six feet away.

The door shuts behind her, and Severa is met with the halls of the Falchion II, the premier starship in the Exalt’s Service. Gawds, she’s not even sure why she has to be  _here_ , of all places, especially when the ship practically flies itself. It’s not like back in the days of the fifteenth federation cruiser designs, when there had to be someone monitoring the boards at all times.

Severa does, actually, go back to her room for a while, but the atmosphere is ruined. Everything is just... ugh. She stands at the Fresher to wash her face, the tiny nozzle spraying her uncomfortably in the eye and a look in the mirror tells her that her lips are all swollen. No amount of chapstick can possibly fix _that_ , but Severa applies it liberally anyways and sets about brushing her hair and not-looking like she's just endured fifty two minutes and fifteen seconds of the worst (hottest) sex she's ever had.

Maybe, just a little bit, Severa's pride is wounded from her less-than-100% challenge, and maybe, just an even tinier bit, Severa's feelings are hurt. Of course she isn't _good enough_ or _hot enough_ or whatever it is. Severa, she thinks, has never been enough for _anyone_. It's nothing that half an hour or so of primping and adjusting makeup can't fix, though, and by the end of it she thinks her lips have almost stopped looking that weird shade of off-purple they sometimes get when they've gotten more than their fair share of use.

She changes into casual clothes afterwards, because even the Exalts' Knightguards have to wear t-shirts and jeans sometimes. The Falchion II is always a little on the cold side, but gawds, it's not like she's never visited Regna Ferox before and that's a hundred times colder than this ship. Instead of staying in her room (there is little point in dressing up when nobody can see you, after all), Severa decides that three doors down the hallway is not nearly as far away from Kjelle as she wants to be and she turns out of the wing, ascending through the elevator-airlock to their firing deck, the only place in the entire damn ship with windows in it.

The firing deck is, in fact, entirely windows, though their stations are further enhanced by targeting screens, and not being surrounded by metal on all sides is a blessing in any ship. She suspects this is why the Falchion II, otherwise entirely dedicated to keeping its secrets within, is infamous for the protruding glass-walled Federation Star on its highest level. There is something inherently peaceful about the beauty of the night sky, unfiltered except for two slim panes of titaniglass, and this, she thinks, is more like a love story. Up here, it's just her and the stars, equally beautiful and equally lonely. There's a part of her that, though she grew up on Ylisse, will always feel like her real home is out here.

Her mother says it’s because she was born on a three-year expedition, out among the stars. Severa thinks it’s because outer space is as far away from her mother as she can get. On Ylisse, you can’t see  _half_  of the stars that are out there because of that big, stupid, radiant sun.

She picks out her favorite constellations-- not that she'll ever admit to having a favorite, of course. The Bull, and his partner the Panther, glimmering against the sky, are unmistakable, even interspersed with a thousand other stars. In this part of the universe, so close to Ylisse itself, no other stars shine more adamantly. The Bull in stars of distinctive orange and the Panther in ones of an eerie green stand together, tall and imposing. The myth is that they were once two great warriors, put into the sky to protect their King Exalted after falling in battle. She has been to the Bull's Eye, before-- that is, Plegia's solar system. She visited with Noire one spring break, when they were just new recruits into the Alliance Space Cadets. Most of it was nigh-uninhabitable desert, but Severa had to admit that they had some of the greatest beaches in the universe. Laurent, she recalls, comes from somewhere in the Panther's Claw-- Vulcan, or something like that.

There are the five points of the Fire Emblem, she notes, still as distinctive as ever, and for once she can actually see Sable, the tiny pinpoint of a deep purple star, so dark that you can practically feel the ultraviolet coming off of it. It's invisible, basically, when you put it next to the other four-- Azure with its bright blue and Vert with its neon lime-yellow, Gules and its deep orange and Argent, the brightest of them all, a shining, pure white. They'd taught her in secondary school that, in fact, it was Sable that burnt at the highest temperature, so insanely dense at its core that, before people actually ventured outside the atmosphere, scholars used to think it was a black hole.

That didn't seem to matter much, when it was nearly impossible to see with the naked eye. Sable was, in the end, just another one of those hundreds of thousands of stars you couldn't see from the ground, the sun's reflection on the moon making it utterly dim by comparison.

Time passes, and Severa doesn't know how long she's been up there. She could check her Smartwatch, but the white glare would seem out-of-place in this quiet observatory, the only internal light the soft red glow of their firing system's "on" button. It doesn't matter, anyways, not when it's Severa and the stars and she's so busy absorbing their beauty that she almost doesn't notice that someone else has come up here.

"The stars look brighter now than they do on the homeplanet, don't you think?" a soft voice comes from Severa's side, and she jumps a little, hand reaching for her Staticshiv before she realizes just who it is.

In the starlight she can more than make out the form of her Princess-- Lucina's dressed darkly, in the indigo-blue she seems to favor, the glint of the glittering stars seeming to bring the night sky into her very hair. Her clothes are not so dissimilar from their uniforms, thermal clothing beneath more sophisticated tunics and button-shirts. She, too, carries a weapon clipped to her belt, the traditional saber of the House Ylisse-- a hilt set with three crystals, constructed by the Exalted themselves. Severa knows their true colors are rose, aqua, and tangerine, but the blade of light appears a deep indigo when activated, almost seeming to suck the light back into it in reverse. The mithril tiara she wears upon her head catches the shine of Argent, and this is her, this is _Lucina_ , and she is the astral sky embodied.

Severa is merely breathless in response.

"D-don't sneak up on me like that!" the knightguard stutters, cheeks turning a pale pink. "You know, if you'd been anyone else, I would've stabbed you by mistake."

"My apologies, then," Lucina answers humbly, casting a quick glance at the weaponry. Her brows furrow with a quizzical worry as she asks, "Are you concerned with the security of our ship? I was thinking about making some changes, after Cousin Owain spent our last communications talking about the threats of tribbles and Klingons."

"Ugh," Severa groans, not entirely certain how to explain this. Damn Owain and his stupid, nerdy worlds of practically ancient sci-fi culture. "Lucina, tribbles and Klingons are _fictional_. Owain was probably just talking about whatever his latest nerdy obsession is."

"Oh, is that so?" Lucina looks genuinely surprised. Severa almost wants to tell her to stop being so ignorant of pop culture, because that's almost too cute. "I just thought... well, it's his first voyage, after all, and the Missletainn isn't exactly the greatest ship, and he was talking about the chances of running into them being very high..."

"Look," Severa tosses a pigtail over her shoulder. "As much as I hate to admit it, Owain's actually a half-decent pilot. Besides, the Missletainn's a civilian craft, you know, a passenger ship? They're not armed all that great in terms of guns, but they've got better diplomatic protection than anything else in the universe."

"Right as always, Severa," and Lucina's shoulders almost seem to sag with relief at her next exhale. Then again, thinks Severa with a note of exasperated fondness, that's the Princess for you, the type of woman who'll keep all of her worries to herself so nobody else has to deal with them. Severa, having been on the end of far too many complaints, would've appreciated this from anyone else, but not Lucina.

Never Lucina.

"Of course I am," Severa huffs, crossing her arms over her chest. She _knows_ Lucina, she's practically grown up in her vassalage, knows all about her self-imposed responsibility of ensuring that everyone-- _everyone_ \-- in the galaxy is safe. "He'll be fine, Lucina, as long as he never figures out how to open communication intercoms with the enemy so he can shout attack names at them, or whatever."

"It's foolish, isn't it," Lucina sighs wistfully, placing her hand against the glass. She is so much a part of the night sky that she doesn't even smudge it with her gloved hand, and it's almost worrisome how much she looks like she could melt into the stars and look right at home, that dumb tiara of hers replacing Argent in the sky. "He's right here... Alpha Tau, not too far from Plegia. It's been nearly safe since the last Galactic War, and yet..."

"Don't look at it like that," Severa takes Lucina's hand off the titaniglass, suddenly aware of how thin the two panes are, as if she's scared the sky will realize that Lucina must be its missing piece, and will suddenly decide to reclaim her. "From out here, it's just another star. You said so yourself that they're brighter up here, so you'd better enjoy it while you can. After we rendezvous with the Ylisstol tomorrow, we'll be stuck on Chon'sin for weeks, and the weather there is _terrible_."

"That's right," Lucina nods, glancing away from the constellation of the Bull. "There won't be much time for stargazing as we field the evacuation fleet. It'll be difficult to land and lift off, since we'll have to work around their Red Spot-- the locals call it the Blood Storm. I'd hoped that it would die out by this year, but their scholars say that its presence is apt to remain for another decade or two and we cannot delay this any further..."

Lucina still hasn't pulled her hand away from Severa's, apparently too lost in concern to pay it any attention, and like a bad cliche they are two girls more at home among the stars than in the arms of their motherland, and Severa has to remind herself again that _this is not a love story_ , because she is dating Kjelle and Lucina is her _Princess_ , goddamn it, and the only surviving heiress of the Exalted bloodline besides--

_And this is not a love story_ , Severa thinks, even as her heart beats so quickly she can almost hear it and, while she's still holding Lucina's hand, she would be very, very hard-pressed to say that she believes herself.


	2. Luna

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _There's no place like home, you say thrice, clicking your ruby-red slippers._

The last Galactic Revolution, Lucina oft thought, had not been good to Ylisse. The planet on the horizon, as the Falchion II approaches its rendezvous hour with the Ylisstol, is void of the lush landscape of forests and mountains and oceans it once displayed, replaced by a barren, dead, nuclear wasteland.

That was Plegia's vengeance, served a hundred years cold. Ylissean merchants had discovered and colonized their planet a thousand years ago, forcing the Plegian market's less-technologically-advanced goods to immediately plummet to ridiculous lows. Inflation ran rampant. In order to obtain any Republic Credit of any value, generations of Plegians worked in mines for diamonds, for tungsten, for gold. When merchants from all over the galaxy had exhausted the planet of all its resources, leaving nothing but polluted seas and coarse yellow sand, they left.

Their primary trade and economy pushed to shambles, the Plegians turned to the two resources they had remaining: an enormous ytterbium mine deemed "too dangerous" by foreigners, and an unending thirst for revenge.

The Ylisstol was practically the planet itself, for all the people who lived on it. Though there were the sparse handful who lived on the ground in lead houses and radioactivity-proof suits, most had chosen to instead flee to the superstation above, clinging closely to the Exalt Emmeryn and Lord Chrom, the inheritors of the line of heroes, last family of Lord Protectors in the entire galaxy.

"Captain, the Ylisstol is approaching target point precisely on schedule," Laurent's cool tone reminds Lucina that this is, indeed, not the time to think on how or why the Ylisstol even exists, but time for them to rendezvous.

"Kjelle, is the landing sequence prepared?" she suddenly snaps back to business.

"Been ready for hours, Captain," Kjelle cracks her knuckles and sets her hands to the keys. "The gravi-anchor is locked and loaded down in bay, tractor beam communications await your command."

"Severa, Cynthia, are you prepared for landing and receiving?" Lucina asks, more out of protocol than anything.

"Let's get this over with," Severa replies, gazing at the incredibly dull camera-view of the outside of the Falchion II. _Their_ job for landing is more about preventing collisions than anything.

"A Space Cadet is prepared for anything!" Cynthia chirps and gods, Lucina thinks, she's so _young_. Cynthia is hardly a wet-behind-the-ears recruit, but she is still just a cadet. She's almost the same age, Lucina thinks, as--

"And your Shocksticks are secured?" Kjelle interrupts, looking at the both of them sternly. "We don't want _electrified lances_ flying around the cabin... again."

"Gawds, yes, that was one time--!"

"Shall we launch communications with the Ylisstol?" Laurent suggests, and Lucina is grateful for it now. There is no time for minute squabbles this close to landing.

"Yes, request communications with Ylisstol Landing HQ," Lucina answers. "And activate the telecomm."

"This is MAA-27, the Falchion II, to mothership Ylisstol, requesting communications for permission to land," Laurent declares into the microphone at his station. Presumably, he's hearing something about being granted communications through his headset, though Lucina isn't completely certain about how it goes as far as technicalities. Either way, he switches on the screen at the head of their cockpit, and HQ answers their call.

"This is Ylisstol Landing Headquarters to Falchion II, do you read me?" and Sumia's beaming face appears on their screen, her wing-eared headset almost comically cute on her stern-looking, military-issue navy blue uniform.

"Hi, mom!" shouts Cynthia, and Lucina is torn between embarrassment and the vague desire to just let Cynthia be Cynthia and carry on as usual.

"Cynthia, gawds, we're on the job," Severa looks absolutely mortified and, Lucina thinks, she seems to have had no problem making up her mind between the two. Laurent's look is disapproving, too, though he doesn't say anything, and Kjelle... Kjelle seems to be at ease, not entirely caring about the break in protocol. Lucina can't help but wonder, though, why her sternness is so adamantly fixed on Severa, and perhaps thinks a little on the strange animosity between the two.

In the end, Lucina decides to leave it be, and give Cynthia a talking-to sometime later. She replies, "Falchion II, in to Ylisstol HQ, we read you. This is Captain Lucina of Ylisse, requesting permission to land aboard for rendezvous scheduled at 1600 hours."

"Hello, Falchion II," Sumia replies, and then, breaking from your professionalism with a smile, "And hello to you, too, Cadet Cynthia. Ylisstol Flight Control requests identification."

"We are sending it over the commlink as we speak," Laurent adds from his station. "You should receive it shortly."

"All right, we've confirmed your identity," Sumia continues after a brief pause. "Permission to land granted; activating tractor beam. We are closing the telecomm, see you in a few minutes!"

After that, landing is a breeze, a mere routine they go through every few months. Lucina almost hasn't realized they've landed until she notices everyone else unbuckling and preparing for all the ceremony that comes with a Princess' starship landing aboard the capital city. She rapidly dresses, then, pulling on her ceremonial cape and epaulettes before facing the door. Severa stands on her right, her senior Knightguard, and Cynthia on the left. Always two, there were, when it came to the Knightguards-- a master and a junior. Always two, just like--

"Lucina!" Severa hisses quietly from her side, nudging her gently with the arm that isn't holding her shockstick. "Walk!"

And then, Lucina finally feels the same dread that fills her every time she walks aboard the mothership, finally realizing she's here, and she steps off the Falchion II to the scenes of the too-bright airlock.

"Princess Lucina," the Exalt Emmeryn, her aunt, smiles at her softly from her spot just before the ship. "Welcome back home. Was your mission fruitful?"

"My Lady Exalt," Lucina bows deeply before the robed sage, Severa and Cynthia beside her falling to one knee as a show of respect. The thick clank of Kjelle's toolbelt on the floor behind her tells her that she and Laurent are doing the same. "It went well, I believe. I will convey the details to you posthaste."

"There are others who wish to see you," and there goes her aunt again with that same nerve-wrackingly peaceful smile upon her face. "And, unfortunately, refueling to oversee. I will be waiting for you at the Crystal Temple when you are prepared so that we may speak."

"Yes, my Lady," Lucina answers, when all she wants to do is shout about how can Emmeryn possibly remain so passive while the world is falling down around her? But then, with a sweep of her robes and the gentle tinkle of her earrings against her hairpiece, the Exalt makes her exit, flanked by Phila on her right and Severa's mother on her left. Unbidden, she casts her eyes at Severa, and the scowl upon her face says that while Lucina was cordially facing off with her aunt, she had been fighting her own silent battle with her mother. The look they exchange then, though brief, gives Lucina a sense of camraderie, and maybe, she thinks, coming back home won't be so terrible.

"Lucina!" a rather weepy voice cries soon enough, and crap, Lucina realizes, she has forgotten about having to face her own mother.

"M-mother," Lucina gasps as Olivia throws her arms over her daughter, practically having the air squeezed out of her. "Mother, are you--"

"S-sorry," Olivia sniffles, trying to wipe the tears from her face. The black veil she wears is getting in the way, and Lucina's heart aches for the both of them. Her mother's pastel-tinted, airy clothes had vanished ever since the year before, now replaced with the somber pitch black of mourning. "It's just-- I was so worried... oh, Lucina, I'm so glad you're okay, I couldn't bear it if... if..."

"My Lady Queen," Kjelle brusquely interjects, placing a hand on Lucina's shoulder. The steely gaze in her eyes brooks no argument, even from the queen herself, and Lucina's resolve strengthens itself at the sound of Kjelle's words. "We still have to refuel and Lady Lucina has to speak with the Exalt. Perhaps this would be a conversation best saved for a later hour?"

Severa gives Kjelle this half-scandalized look, but Olivia, for her part, seems to calm down and realize that she's been making a scene in the densely-populated airlock, rife with Ylisse's pilots and a great deal of them who she doesn't know, "Ah... I'm sorry, Lucina, Kjelle's right... please come home later today!"

The Queen of Ylisse is utterly mortified at her own behavior, but, Lucina thinks, it is best that Kjelle stopped it before it became ship gossip that the Queen had a breakdown in the airlock. As she begins helping Kjelle and the mothership crew carefully unhook the wires and tubes for refueling, Lucina looks at her mechanic for a moment-- really _looks_ at her.

Kjelle, she knows, doesn't have any robotic body parts-- but the machinery and tools she carries has always given her a very metallic appearance, particularly the instruments she brandishes on her shoulders, diagnostic machinery that hangs in the shape of a crescent. Her face is rounded, pale, the kind of pallor that can only be achieved by a thousand hours of working inside the massive engine of a spacecraft, to see neither sun not moon nor stars until the malfunction is once more repaired. And, thought with a blush, Lucina knows first-hand the roundness of completely different fleshly features, alternatively smooth and cratered and scarred. There isn't a single part of Kjelle that doesn't look born of the moon, her mechanical appliances a crescent, her eyes half-moons, her face a full lunar expression. She's cool and reflective and closer than anything else in the sky, but still yet too far to reach without the assistance of spacecraft and a ridiculous amount of starship fuel.

It's this reason, she thinks, Lucina requested Kjelle in particular as part of the Falchion II's main crew. They hadn't spoken in months, years even, not since they'd been Cadets together. Not since their ill-fated affair as trainees, the one in which they'd parted on mutual terms-- Kjelle had been planning to fight in the Plegian War, lightyears from where Lucina was training to control the budding powers of her Exalted blood.

They'd agreed, then, that the distance would be too great to continue, and besides, wasn't Lucina supposed to make sure there was another generation of Exalted, anyways? But the way to Kjelle's heart has always been (not in roses nor candlelit dinners but) in the stars, and... _after_ , there was a part of Lucina that yearned once more for the proximity of one she had once called "lover." Even if they could never touch, even if they forswore their love as doomed... there was still the stardust that lingered after their stellar explosion, and that was enough for Lucina to take comfort in.

"Kjelle," she murmurs quietly in a gibbous ear. "Thank you back there, for what you said to my mother... she would have been mortified to create any commotion, if she'd realized where she was."

"It's no problem," Kjelle answers, hoisting another hose onto its terminal and securing it. Her biceps ripple with the effort, but its only tell on her face is a slightly furrowed brow. "It's not completely unreasonable for her to worry over her kid, but not in the eye of the public. She's still grieving. I think... I think everyone who knew Inigo still is, especially since it was so sudden. But that's still better kept to those who are close to you... right?"

"Yes," Lucina swallows the lump in her throat, and through the corner of her eye, she can still see the sooty wreckage of what remained of the Minerva after the Plegian War's final battle. Since the ship had its final skirmish with the Aversa's Night, Ylissean techs had been working tirelessly to restore it, the vessel for which their future Lord had _died_ to keep in flight during that battle-- according to his captain, channeling every last drop of his Exalted Power into keeping it together long enough to take down the headship of Rear Admiral Aversa. Channeling so much of his lifeblood's power, in fact, that there hadn't been enough left in his body to keep him alive... "Yes... it is."

Kjelle pauses for a moment after that, following Lucina's gaze to the burnt mess that was once the Minerva, and purses her lips, "He gave us the key to victory, you know... without the Rear Admiral, their only military genius, the Plegians were lost. I... used to think your brother was a slacker. But even _I_ have to admit that he was worthy of the title Lord."

"Kjelle," Lucina says, and Kjelle has that Look in her eyes like she wants to embrace her, and it's still the same after all these years. In the end, though, Lucina merely gives her half of a smile and a sprocket wrench for the next fuel valve, "Thank you."

"No problem," Kjelle murmurs back, and for however harsh she is normally, there is something softer about her now. "If... you still consider me close enough, I've got two perfectly functioning ears if you want to talk."

"Thank you," Lucina repeats a third time, but she knows that Kjelle will understand the implied, "I'm sorry." Even if it had been Lucina who sought her out to begin with, she still had not until now spoken to her, and for that... perhaps Kjelle's legendary confidence had been shaken-- if not in herself, then with Lucina's regard for their friendship.

Refueling is its own adventure. The Falchion's triple-guard titaniglass tanks held behind more screws and bolts than you could find on some whole moons. The protection is necessary, though-- one misfire could lead to an explosion of epic proportions, and the Falchion II requires a truly enormous amount of fuel to traverse space the way it does now. A failure to seal each valve exactly could lead to an explosion in the lower tanks. The engineers, to counter this, designed a method of separation in the tanks.

By the time the crew is finished, it is nearing the evening meal, and Lucina's received a mandatory summons to the Crystal Temple.

"B-but, Lucina, it's the Knightguard's job to accompany you everywhere!" Cynthia stutters, looking horrified at the Princess' suggestion that she go eat dinner with her family.

"We depart for Chon'sin tomorrow afternoon, Cynthia," Lucina dearly hopes that her guardswoman doesn't continue to take her job with... quite so much vigor. Even visiting the water closet could be an uphill battle with the rookie in question. "You should spend time with your family while you can."

"I know, but--"

"Don't worry about it," Severa scowls at her, taking Lucina's arm almost protectively. " _I'll_ be with Lucina the whole time. I have to go to the Temple anyways, my mother doesn't get off from Exalt-guarding until early tomorrow morning."

"All right!" Cynthia beams brightly, already deactivating her shockstick for a more civilian look. "Under your protection, Severa, there's no way anything'll happen to Lucina anyways... you'll scare away all the bad guys, hee hee!"

"Come on," Severa mutters under her breath, shooting what is very obviously a glare in Cynthia's direction. "Before she changes her mind."

"Ah, is that likely to happen?" Lucina asks, confused. Hadn't Cynthia been the one so eager to see her parents that she'd broken protocol when they landed?

"No," Severa answers, a heavy sigh settling into her heart. There's always been a part of Severa's strange way of communication that Lucina hasn't always been able to understand one hundred percent, despite the two of them having grown up together, but she can tell that there's something weighing on her. Suddenly, out of nowhere, Severa adds, "You don't have to take things so seriously all the time, you know?"

"I'm afraid I don't know what you mean," Lucina replies, and this the way she's always spoken to Severa, but still she doesn't understand what's going through that pigtail-haired head of hers. "Severa... is something the matter?"

"Oh, you know, I'm _only_ meeting my mother again today," Severa rolls her eyes. "But aside from that, I'm fine. It's _you_ I'm worried about."

"I'll be... okay," Lucina answers, and she steps from the walkway to Ylisstol's enormous Underway subway system, even their princess looking ordinary enough in her civilian clothing to blend into the crowd with little effort. "I have my duty. I can't afford to not be."

"You were talking with _Kjelle_ earlier, and then you came back all upset," Severa scowls-- no, Lucina realizes, that's a pout. A disdainful one, but a pout nonetheless. If she didn't know better, she'd say Severa was envious, but that's ridiculous. There is nothing to be jealous of, Lucina thinks with just the tiniest twinge of longing, not anymore. There is only friendship, which Severa already has from her in spades. "What did she do to you?"

"Nothing," Lucina replies, shaking her head. "We just spoke a bit... even though I requested her to be on the Falchion II's crew, we hadn't spoken in a long time."

"Well, then what did she _say_ to you??" Severa demands, and she looks angry, in spite of the low tone of her voice. Part of Lucina worries that she'd turn her lance on a crewmate if she isn't placated by an answer. "You wouldn't be like this normally, no matter who you'd talked to."

"We only spoke about. About my brother," Lucina falters for a moment. "I... we knew each other in the cadets. I guess I just remembered some things that happened back then."

"Oh," Severa replies, her anger deflating. "Nostalgia, I should've known."

"We... were very close back then," Lucina explains, not entirely sure how to intimate to her most trusted Knightguard the exact nature of their brief, ill-fated relationship. At last, she finally said, "The break-up was mutual, but still..."

Lucina carefully observes at the expressions flitting across Severa's face, confused then understanding then angry and finally just... sad?

"I see," Severa answers at last. "I get it now... look, this is our stop. Let's get off here."

The subway shakes only a little before it stops and Severa pulls Lucina towards the obscenely long, enclosed bridge between the main body of the Ylisstol and its Crystal Temple. Everything in this part of Ylisstol glitters, though in truth there are only a handful of actual crystals aboard the entire ship. The titaniglass construct is almost completely transparent, and the bridge, too, is almost clear except for the floor. The stars themselves are the only wallpaper necessary, but the bridge walks like a death march, the silence between the two women nearly palpable, and not the same kind of comfortable it used to be. For the first time in a long time, Lucina can sense some kind of tension between them, and she wonders if it's possible Severa was uncomfortable with the idea she had once been with Kjelle...

"Lucina," a voice calls her out of the silence, but it isn't the one she's been longing to hear.

"Aunt Emmeryn," Lucina replies cordially, bowing in respect.

"Severa," Emm smiles at her Knightguard's daughter, and Severa, though she kneels respectfully, does so with a frown. "Ah. Is it possible for you to go ahead? I wished to walk a while with my niece..."

"Sure," Severa answers, a kind of petulant defeat taking root in her tone. "Is it safe for the both of you to be here alone?"

"The doors to this bridge open not for anyone not of Exalted blood," Emmeryn explains with a smile. "I think none shall harm us who are here."

Severa hesitates for a moment, but Lucina cannot bear the silence of a dear friend any longer and entreats her with her eyes and a quick jerk of the head to go on ahead. Severa leaves, though reluctant.

"Lucina," whispers Aunt Emm, not the normal kind of whisper but the kind that can only be done by those of two like minds of the same Exalted blood. "I wished to speak with you, my niece... have you been faring well these past few months?"

"As well as can be expected," Lucina answers with the same kind of mind-whisper. "I have fulfilled my duty to the people of Regna Ferox with this mission to escort to them one of my finest fighters for their tournament. Though, of course, I am uncertain if returning Sir Lon'qu to them will be received as intended..."

"As a compliment?" Emmeryn responds, her mouth unmoving, and silent, save for the soft pad of her boots on the floor. "They will, undoubtedly-- after all, you have told them that the fighter whose assistance you borrowed from them years ago is among the best in all Ylisse. In any case, all will be forgiven if he fights well."

"Yes. Strength is law there," Lucina replies coolly. "Sir Lon'qu has a brave heart, and the teachings of the Hero King have taught us that when the strength of bodies are equal, it is the strength of heart that gives us the advantage."

"And we, the children of his blood, must wield both strengths with love, in equal parts gentleness and sternness," Emmeryn answers after a beat. "Always two, there are."

"But in this generation, there is one," Lucina answers, a sort of sad firmness in her reply. "I am the last of the Exalted... because my brother..."

Emmeryn pauses for a second, stopping her gentle walk and Lucina almost stops in shock, too, when the Exalt replies, "No. There is another."

"No, that cannot be," Lucina gasps, this time out-loud. "That's not possible... from birth, that was how it was decided. I would inherit the role of the governor, the Exalt, the eldest-born. And Inigo would become Lord, the army general, as is traditional for the second-born. Those roles have been in our blood for a thousand years, bestowing us with the strength of heart required to protect the galaxy."

"There is another," Emm corrects gently, laying her tender hand on Lucina's shoulder. "Your cousin, Lord Owain..."

"But Aunt Lissa, I thought, did not carry the Exalted powers in her blood?" Lucina's heart fills with dread, fear for the safety of her younger cousin. There was a danger to bearing the powers of the Exalted, especially with precious little training. It could become overwhelming, painfully so. And... as Inigo had proved, sometimes fatally so.

"The power itself she carries not, but the blood of the Hero-King runs through her veins, and therefore, too, her son's," Emmeryn explains, a deep solemnity coming into her face. "It is uncertain, though, if he'll develop the powers of the Exalted himself, especially since he is long past the age the chosen normally adapt them. However, sense it in him I can-- his children will bear the powers of the Exalted, I suspect. For this reason, I must beg of you... be very careful, Lucina. Stay safe. But so, too, do not fear for your bloodline so dearly that you are unable to fulfill your true duty, which is to an order higher than the powers of a Hero King's blood."

"My true duty," Lucina repeats, placing her gloved hand on the titaniglass window, just over where she can see the Bull's Eye. "To the people."

"Yes," replies Emmeryn, her voice heavy with the gravity of responsibility. "To the people."


	3. Sol

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Every substance has a melting point._

Severa is the one to come to _her_ , that night, fuming as red as the hair she'd inherited from her mother.

"I can't believe you," the guardswoman snarls, the flush on her cheeks making her look strangely radiant. "I can't believe you dated _Lucina_!"

"Um, what?" Kjelle is affronted by the confrontation. " _Excuse me_??"

"Lucina," Severa's face scrunches up as it sometimes does when she's upset. "She said... well, she _told_ me you used to date as cadets. Don't you know how _wrong_ that is??"

"What's so wrong about dating Lucina?" Kjelle scowls, not liking this reaction. There was, after all, still a part of her that would date Lucina still, if not for the whole bloodline thing she had to carry on. "Is it because we're both women? In case you haven't noticed, Severa, I'm with _you_ now and you're a woman, too."

"Ugh, don't pretend it has anything to do with that," Severa snaps, flipping a pigtail over her shoulder and facing the wall. "It's because she deserves better than you, that's what! Someone who'll stay by her side always, who can be considerate of her feelings, and make sure she doesn't overwork herself, you know, stuff _you_ never do."

"Do you mean someone like _you_?" Kjelle interjects, trapping Severa between her arms against the wall. It seemed she'd overestimated the strength of the wall, though, which cracked from the force of her hands. "Because I've watched you, you know, and the way you look at her... you look at her like you love her."

"H-hey!" Severa exclaims. "What was that for? Don't tell me... you're jealous?"

"Yeah, maybe I am," Kjelle admits, pushing away from the wall once more. "But so are you. That's why you're even talking to me now, isn't it?"

"I-I'm not jealous!" Severa blushes, and damn her for the cute, delicate tint of pink at the tips of her ears.

Kjelle purses her lips and thinks for a moment, her eyes narrowing into crescents. 

"I slept with Lucina. Several times," she finally says. She adds with a smirk, "I was her first."

"Ugh!! You-- you--" Severa sputters, turning on her heel and glaring. "Fine! Yes, I'm jealous... I've loved her since we were children. Everyone always says I joined the Knightguard to follow in my mother's footsteps... but I did it for Lucina, so I'd never have to leave her side. But then you come along, with your perfect abs and soft lips and ugh, those damn challenges of yours--"

"I almost can't tell who you're jealous of," Kjelle snorts bitterly.

"I don't know, both of you!" Severa scowls, but then-- she deflates. "Ugh, I can't believe it. I actually love both of you. This is a disaster."

There is a moment of incredibly awkward pause as Severa finally, once more, slumps against the wall with possibly the deepest sigh Kjelle's ever heard. And maybe Severa needed to realize it, maybe she needed the shock of Kjelle's words to come to terms with her feelings, but this woman who so oft looks brash and radiant seems now like the sun come into a gloomy eclipse.

"Yeah, well," Kjelle casts a side-glance over Severa's defeated expression, and her heart aches. "I don't think there's any woman of good taste who isn't at least a little bit in love with Lucina. And I have to admit, there's nobody out there who challenges me the way you do, and I like that too. So, in the end, we're in the same boat here."

"Gawds, who even uses _boats_ anymore?" Severa blurts out, and for the first time in a long time, they laugh together, simply taken in by the absurdity of the situation.

* * *

It is easy to forget why they're on this trip to begin with. The flight to Chon'sin seems to go by almost too quickly, then, the rivalry between them changing from a tension-filled heat, like a star mid-explosion, to the playful duel of two galaxies dancing with each other, wisps of entire solar systems colliding to create something both chaotic and beautiful.

"Careful to secure your shocklances," Kjelle teases as they brush by each other in the halls of the Falchion II.

"As long as you make sure to get a separate seatbelt for that thing," Severa smirks back, flicking the equipment on Kjelle's shoulders with her immaculate nails.

Kjelle leans in to kiss her, then, even though they're in the middle of preparing for landing on the planet Chon'sin. Severa's lips are warm, and taste faintly of the unflavored chapstick she usually uses when _extra terra,_ and though their mouths remain closed, Kjelle feels a warmth blooming everywhere. Severa's hands rest on her chestguard, and damn this machinery for keeping another layer between their skin. Who would have guessed it, that an ice queen like Severa and a steel wall like Kjelle would melt at the same point?

"Kjelle?" a surprised voice asks, and the two of them break apart to see a very stunned-looking Lucina standing in the hall beside them. She seems rooted to the floor as she asks again, more hesitantly, "... Severa?"

"Did you want us at our posts... Lucina?" Kjelle replies, not entirely certain how to combat the incredible mortification of the situation.

Severa, she can tell, is freaking out on the inside-- her stance hasn't changed, but her eyes are wide, and it's that embarrassing feeling of "my girlfriend and I were caught kissing by our captain, who also happens to be both of our first loves." Kjelle is pretty sure she can feel the heat from her face secondhand.

"Yes, it seems there's a complication with the landing," Lucina eventually manages to say after a horrifically long, tremendously awkward pause. "Chon'sin's giant superstorm is advancing at a greater speed than originally anticipated, we'll have to land immediately or else wait another twelve hours for it to pass. Day breaks in just a few hours, and if we have to wait any longer, we won't be able to keep up with Chon'sin's shadow."

"I'm on it, Captain," Kjelle answers, undoing her diagnostics kit. "I just have to put this away, and then prepare the anchor..."

"I'll do it," Severa pulls the weighty equipment from Kjelle's shoulders with a grunt. "Gawds, how do you walk with this thing? Go do the anchor... this goes in the belted case in your room, right?"

"Severa--" Kjelle protests, but Lucina makes a movement to lift the other end of it.

"Go, the anchor's more important now. I'll help her," Lucina nods sharply in the direction of their control room. "You're the only one who can handle the machinery for that."

"Right," Kjelle nods once, firmly, an indication of deference to Lucina's authority as captain. She sends an apologetic look in Severa's direction, but the Knightguard is playing tough and pretending that this isn't the most awkward situation she's been in since middle school.

"Well, come on," Severa scowls, and begins carrying the kit in the direction of Kjelle's room.

Kjelle departs, one last glance backwards at the two of them, and she isn't sure why she's worried, or who she's worried for, but something seems to sink in her gut.

"I... Severa," Lucina says after Kjelle has gone. The size of the diagnostics shoulderpads does not leave much room between them.

"We were dating _before_ you told me you'd been with Kjelle," Severa defends, already on her guard. She casts an apologetic side-glance, "Just to clear things up."

"I... hadn't known," Lucina admits, looking incredibly sheepish. "I swear to you, Severa, I did not intend to upset you by admitting my longing for someone you were already involved with. You are still a dear friend of mine, and I hope..."

"You're not the one in the wrong here," Severa frowns, an expression much softer than her usual disgruntled scowl. "I guess I should have told you, but I just... didn't. You've got enough to worry about without _my_ problems, too."

"It's true that I have many concerns, but I'm never too busy for my oldest, dearest friend," Lucina's eyes flicker in a series of blinks, and Severa is just near enough to her to see the teardrop-stars clinging to the fringes of her lashes. "I'm always telling you about my concerns, but I'm afraid I've been remiss in addressing yours. Please... forgive me."

Severa can't control what comes out of her mouth next, so completely moved by the sight of Lucina's tears. Was Severa so prominent in her heart that she was even able to shed tears over her? An entire lifetime of holding her hand when her duties lay heavy on her mind, of standing nearby as the wind at her back and the sword by her side, of watching this woman fade into the night sky like the stars themselves, all of it accumulates in her heart.

She says, "Lucina, I _love_ you."

Lucina pauses in the middle of punching in the keycode for Kjelle's room, "I... pardon? I don't understand..."

"Don't make me say it again," Severa blushes furiously, her face almost turning into a reliable source of light from the vibrancy of the color.

"But... you, and Kjelle," Lucina's brow furrows in perplexion.

"Kjelle... Kjelle and her damn sense of honor," Severa is momentarily aggrieved. "Kjelle still loves you, too, but she's too noble to risk your bloodline going extinct. Ugh. Don't tell her I said that, she'll be mad that I told you before she could."

"But don't you see?" Lucina entreats, and it's clear she's more or less snapped out of befuddlement. "It can't be so... the way you kissed just now, you looked like you were in love."

"So what, now it's a crime to care about more than one person?" Severa sniffs, concealing her injury as she punches in Kjelle's keycode herself. The door, now familiar to her, slides open.

"Ah, no, it's not... I hadn't thought of it like that," Lucina admits. "It's never occurred to me before."

"Whatever, it isn't like I thought anything would go anywhere," Severa mutters, her ears turning pink at the ends. "Help me get that drawer open, would you? Can't drop this thing, something might break."

"Yes, of course," Lucina deftly unbuckles the belted drawer, and the job is done shortly from there. She looks like she wants to continue the conversation, but then thinks better of it and merely says, "We need to get to the control room... it is imperative we lead the transport convoy to land safely."

"Ugh, right, we still have to evacuate this whole planet..." Severa is almost surprised by how she forgot the entire reason they were out here to begin with.

"The citizens of Chon'sin are depending on us," Lucina answers, and she is silent with the weight of duty as they dash to the piloting bay.

* * *

"Lucina, the Red Spot of Chon'sin is approaching us at nearly four hundred miles per hour," Laurent informs her succinctly the moment they step inside the bay. His tone is flat, but his anxiety shows through the rapid-fire of his words. "The shuttles are awaiting your command to begin landing... if we are swift, we should be able to make it. Barely."

Lucina immediately grabs the commlink, "This is Falchion II of the Ylissean evacuation team to Chon'sin Spaceport, requesting permission to begin landing."

"Chon'sin Spaceport to Falchion II, requesting identification," the crackly microphone on the other end replies.

"Laurent--" Lucina begins, but he is already rapidly typing in the file attachments.

"Sent," he answers, before turning to the Knightguard. "Severa, Cynthia, keep an eye on the storm from your monitors."

"Aye-aye!" Cynthia salutes.

"Permission to land granted," the other voice answers. "We're activating the tractor beam; start sending your shuttles."

"Will do," Lucina answers, turning a dial that switches the commlink to its other channel. "This is Falchion II to the Ylissean evacuation team convoy, shuttles report in for landing and begin grounding sequences."

"This is Captain Owain of the Missletainn, prepared for landing," is the first reply back through the radio, and Lucina is relieved to hear he'd met the rendezvous with the rest of the convoy okay. Four dozen other voices answer in quick succession, each convoy accounted for. 

"All right, we are prepared to land in marching order," Lucina announces, taking her seat and firmly buckling. "Be warned, Chon'sin's landing pad is partially underground; it'll be difficult to time accordingly. Keep your commlinks open for further messages, over and out."

It is then Kjelle hauls herself in, securing herself in her seat as she slides into it, "The anchoring mechanisms are ready, how is the landing going?"

"We'll make it," Lucina answers, without a pause for hesitation or a moment of doubt. Even a second's lapse in confidence for her, thought Kjelle, could mean the end of a shuttle ship that believed they were doomed.

"It's moving quickly," Severa scowls, her manicure tapping open the dialog windows on the screen. "We're sending them down in groups of eight, but it's not going to be fast enough. The last convoy's going to get stuck in the endtails of the winds, unless we hurry it up."

"Unless..." Laurent pauses mid-suggestion. "Unless we switch the escort's landing with the rear guard. This ship is technologically advanced enough to maintain landing and flight in winds up to 300 mph, and if I arrange our guns like so..."

"We'll do it," Lucina decides. "Eight ships is enough to evacuate nearly thirty thousand people. Chon'sin needs those."

"All right," Laurent agrees readily, before pressing a button that reveals Lucina's steering wheel. "Be prepared to make a rough landing."

Lucina picks up the commlink again, then, "This is Falchion II to landing group six, take the next landing round. We'll bring up the rear, over."

"This is group six leader, the Grimstalker," comes the voice from the other side. "We hear you, but be careful. The storm's picking up speed, over."

"We'll be fine, just make sure all of you land safely," Lucina answers. "The people of Chon'sin are depending on you, over and out."

"Landing group six has left," Cynthia reports from her side of the ship. "I hope they'll make it down okay..."

"They'll be fine," Severa rolls her eyes. "Have you ever _seen_ the Grimstalker? It's not totally flimsy, the way the Missletainn is. Sorc shuttles are used to the desert-- and they'll only have a little more wind than we anticipated."

"Severa's right," Laurent affirms, a dark frown settling over his face. "They'll be fine... it's us we need to worry about, now. Night ends in just two more hours, and the only reason we're not burned to ash is because of Chon'sin's shadow. The storm, too, will provide an obstacle between us and the landing site."

"This is group three leader, the Deliverer," the commlink announces. "Rear guard may begin descending... but hurry."

"Laurent, activate the tractor sync," Lucina sets her hands on the wheel, a determination setting into her eyes. "Kjelle, set the engine thruster to go. Severa, Cynthia, keep an eye out for debris. The rear guard is on its way."

"Engines are a-go," Kjelle announces, flipping the various switches. "Activating vertical rotation!"

"The tractor beams are syncing, preparing for penetration of the atmosphere," Laurent adds.

"Clear on this side," says Severa.

"And we're a-okay here, too!" exclaims Cynthia.

"In three, two, one..." Lucina tenses, slamming her foot on the acceleration as far as it'll go. "Now!"

And the Falchion II takes off, leaving a glowing blade of electric blue energy in its wake, the very fabric of space warped by the ship's speed. She is vaguely aware of some shrieking in the cabin, but she can't look away from the skies now, not when they're entering the atmosphere of an actual planet. The speed and skill required to fly a ship through Chon'sin's foggy haze requires no distraction.

"Satellite at three o'clock!" Cynthia manages to shout over the commotion.

"Forget that, there's the storm at left!" Severa yells back. 

"Kjelle, we're drifting," Lucina adds, deftly dodging the satellite, but feeling the storm start pulling the Falchion II into it. "Backup thrusters! Laurent, check our location!"

But then, winds flip the whole ship upside down and with a sickening thump against what was once the ceiling of the room, there is Laurent, unconscious and very clearly not strapped into his chair. Lucina gasps in horror, almost freezing up at the sight of her friend's limp body, but then Kjelle shouts, "Lucina! Snap out of it! The backup thrusters are on, you have to steer!"

And Lucina just barely manages to retake the ship from the storm, righting it in Chon'sin's gravity field. She tries hard not to pay attention to the second thumping sound, from Laurent falling back on the floor.

"I can't see anything through all this sand," Lucina shouts, trying to outpower the noise of her own thumping heart. "This is Falchion II to Chon'sin Spaceport, can you see us? Where are you?"

"bzzt.... --aceport--............ breaking......... fssshzt .... luck," is the fuzzy reply, and Lucina knows then that this is just them, the Falchion II, in the tendrils of Chon'sin's Red Spot, their own navigator out of commission and struggling to even remain upright.

"We can't get out of this without a navigator," Lucina pleads. "Chon'sin Spaceport, do you read me?? Do you read me!?"

The line goes dead.

"Lucina, we have to make a landing," Kjelle declares. "We don't have enough fuel to make it more than another fifteen minutes with all the thrusters on!"

"Lucina!" Cynthia cries. "Huge triangle hurtling this way, two o'clock!"

"A-ah!" Lucina swerves, and the enormous windpower generator barely misses the main chamber, slicing off their starboard-side gun.

"I've had enough," Severa snarls, finally deciding to unstrap herself from the seat. The way she clutches it when she stands betrays her fear. "Lucina, try to keep us going straight!"

"Severa, what do you think you're doing?" Kjelle gasps.

"I- I don't know how much longer I can keep us balanced..." Lucina admits, trying to adjust the tilt of the ship as the left half outweighs the right by almost a thousand pounds. "I can't see anything in this mess..."

"You can do it, Lucina," Severa answers, practically falling on top of her currently-null radar screens as she stumbles back towards Laurent's station. "If anyone can, it's you."

And part of her wants to beg Severa to strap herself back into a chair, any chair, so that she's not in the open chamber of this ship in the middle of a storm, unfettered to anything except whatever she can grab. But another part of her also knows that, if they do not have a navigator soon, they will all die here.

"Laurent!" Cynthia exclaims, as the storm jostles them another sharp movement and he is about to slide head-first into a piece of painful-looking equipment.

"Ugh!" Severa catches him by the leg, the ship almost turned onto its side by the steep slope of their angle. "You better be grateful for this when you wake up, four-eyes."

It's only a few steps for Severa to drag Laurent back to his station, strapping him into the secondary seat before buckling herself in. Kjelle almost gives a sigh of relief, almost at the same time Lucina screams, because their ship has just been rolled around in a 360-degree turn, "Severa!"

"Gawds, I'm okay!" she shouts back, pulling up her nav diagnostic screens. Navigation was for nerds, she thought, but that didn't mean Severa didn't know how to do it. "Storm's reversing the polarity of the connection... Kjelle, I need you to fire the main port gun!"

"Are you daft?" Kjelle demands. "We barely have enough energy to keep aloft, and you want to fire the gun??"

"Turn off the backup thrusters then, and _then_ fire the gun!" Severa orders. "And point it straight up when you do it, ok? Lucina, can you keep us upright just a little longer?"

"The winds are too fast... I don't know..." Lucina practically wrestles with the steering wheel. "I can't make us turn hard enough..."

"Wait, Lucina," Cynthia gasps. "You're Exalted!"

"We knew that already," Severa snipes, the stress of the situation getting to her.

"No..." Lucina's mouth falls open for a second before she smiles. "I'm _Exalted_."

And then, she lets go of the wheel. The rush of wind and blood in Kjelle's ears slows, and even Severa seems more relaxed as Lucina reaches out to the aether and pulls, righting their ship against the wind.

"Trust me, Kjelle," Severa whispers, and it seems to echo in the suddenly-silent chamber. "Fire the gun."

Kjelle twists the dial to level the gun perfectly upwards, and fires.

There is an echoing boom, almost completely muted in the cockpit, but they can feel the vibrations and then, Lucina can see through the storm again and the polarity is back on, all of the storm's magnetic discharge eliminated through the gun's energy.

"All right, Lucina, landing is down, west, and straight ahead," Severa manages to say, pulling in the navigational radar for her with one hand, and re-locating the tractor beam connection with the other. "The base of the storm isn't there yet."

"I hear you, Severa," Lucina answers. "Kjelle, disengage our port gun from the ship; we don't have the energy to fire again. It'll just slow us down."

"Clear skies ahead, Captain!" Cynthia chirps, and before they know it, they are gliding into Chon'sin Spaceport, mere minutes before the storm's arrival would force them to close the landing bay.

Severa carefully unbuckles her belts before standing and pulling the knob that opens their door, followed by the various airlock buttons. Her legs are trembling, and she is shaking so hard that she doesn't even know what happened-- only that they just had an extremely close brush with the famed Red Spot of Chon'sin, and managed to get out alive.

Arms wrap around her waist, then, and it takes every bit of willpower in Severa's body not to merely collapse against Kjelle as she whispers, "Don't ever worry me like that again."

Severa casts a glance at Laurent's injuries, and decides in the end that they'd better not move him more, lest they injure him further. He looks pretty bad, she decides, and he's definitely broken a bone or two.

"It's not like I planned on it," Severa scowls, and Kjelle lets go and pats her on the shoulder.

Lucina seems more composed than she feels, and it's only the tell of the way she brushes her bangs that makes Kjelle worry about her.

"Lucina, you all right?" she asks, gently squeezing her hand.

"I'll be fine," she answers. "We need to get Laurent to a doctor... but at least we didn't send any of the shuttles down in that. Come on, then!"

"Knightguard Cynthia, reporting for duty!" shouts the cadet. "Let's go meet the people of Chon'sin!"

When the Princess of Ylisse steps out of the ship, she is met with a tall woman in purple robes, followed by a small entourage of elegantly dressed people-- presumably, diplomats and advisers.

"Princess Lucina of Ylisse, I welcome you to Chon'sin," she says. "I am relieved to see you escaped the Blood Storm... I admit, we were worried for a while."

"Princess Say'ri," Lucina nods her head deeply in a sort-of abbreviated bow to show her regard. "Sorry, but one of my crew members has suffered urgent injury; could we have a medic?"

"Pheros," she turns to one of the women in her party. "See to him posthaste, and dispatch a summons for the finest of our doctors!"

"Yes, my lady," the blonde salutes, raising a hand above her eyepatch before sending a page off for her team and rushing into the Falchion II herself.

"You need not worry about your comrade, Princess Lucina," Say'ri assures her. "Pheros is the greatest medic in our entire star system; she can repair any wound humanly possible to repair."

Lucina's shoulders dip downward in relief as tension melts away from her, "Thank you, my lady. I'm relieved to hear that."

"There's no need for thanks; 'tis thee whom I should be thanking," and Say'ri falls to a knee in a knightly bow, followed by most of the nobles behind her. "The sun shall soon grow large enough to devour our planet whole, and these convoys alone offer my people a method of salvation."

"Stand, please," Lucina requests, feeling flattered and overall undeserving of the gesture. "Protecting the people of the galaxy is thanks within itself."

"Mayhaps we could discuss evacuation procedures in the council chambers?" Say'ri suggests. "I am sure we all wish to expedite the evacuation any way possible."

Lucina casts a glance back at the Falchion II, its outer layers gouged and pockmarked with sand and debris, and her injured friend within.

"I'll keep an eye on Laurent," volunteers Severa with a scowl. "I mean, I had to rescue him and all, so he's kind of my responsibility now."

"Very well," Lucina nods, and she would feel rather lonely if not for Kjelle, standing right behind her, exchanging a Look with Severa that conveys a promise that they trust the other to keep. For Severa, it is the promise that she will watch Kjelle's fellow steward of the Falchion II and the ship she'd put her energy into maintaining. For Kjelle, it is the promise that she'll protect Lucina and Cynthia, and all that it entails.

"If you would follow me, the council chambers are this way," Say'ri entreats, and Lucina sets off behind her, shoes clicking on the concrete floor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Gawds, who even uses _boats_ anymore?"
> 
> In an age where space flight is possible, and most intraplanetary commerce is handled with more powerful aerial cargo, boats are kind of on the periphery, though the saying is still around. Sort of like, "don't have a bee in your bonnet" even though bonnets went out of fashion a hundredish years ago.


	4. Aether

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Please, God, let me be a (love)bird._

Kjelle understands, then, why Severa preferred that she attend this meeting with Lucina and Cynthia. Chon'sin itself is not without its own transportation shuttles, but they are mostly in ill repair from when the more transport-advanced Valmese brought them over twenty years ago, intending to colonize this planet without any awareness of the people who lived under its surface. Not only are they of the older models predating the Plegian War, but even the greatest of them, the Wolfberg, has issues that require a woman of Kjelle's engineering expertise to fix.

Valm, explained an older man garbed in red, had been swallowed by the sun almost a hundred years ago. Each time, the Valmese colonized the next planet outward in the solar system, until they'd come to Chon'sin, the first one they'd actually found already inhabited. There was friction between the two factions, he added bluntly, but emphasized their need to work together and escape the solar system before their sun exploded-- or worse, imploded into a fathomless black hole.

"What is your astronomers' estimate on when the solar catastrophe will occur?" Lucina asks, a frown settling into her face. "With only our convoys at hand, it could take over a year to move this planet's population... even if we petition for more transportation ships from other members of the Alliance. To move your people any more quickly would require either twice the number of ships, or for an ally nearer to us than Plegia to volunteer as a refugee center."

"Aye, 'tis as I feared," Say'ri nods somberly. "We discovered but recently that, as the sun edges upon our atmosphere, the rate of its growth quickens. Paired with last week's meteor collision on our sun, we cannot put up a resistance much longer. Astronomers project our planet shall be devoured completely in perhaps five or six years... but that it will be stripped of its breathable atmosphere within a dozen months. With such sparse oxygen remaining, 'twould be near impossible to continue life here."

"Do you think you'd be capable of surviving just a little longer, if we could get you some supplementary help?" Kjelle suggests. "If we pack the convoys with oxygen tanks and other necessary things..."

"Perhaps," answers Say'ri, looking up at their titaniglass ceiling. A glowing stone set in the ground above illuminates her face. "But as the sun grows ever closer, our Blood Storm grows stronger. Already have we lost our fair share of windpower generators to the quickened speeds... and, indeed, lost many a brave engineer to replacing the generators' vanes. I fear for the day it grows strong enough to break though our windguards completely-- for if it does, we are doomed either way."

"Is that why the storm was so close to us at landing?" Cynthia gasps.

"Aye," Say'ri replies apologetically. "It's become unpredictable as of late, though it's traversed the same path for hundreds of years."

"We'll petition the rest of the Alliance to send you as many transport ships and supplies as they can spare," Lucina declares passionately. "I will not allow your lives to be taken!"

"Then let it be as we discussed," Say'ri stands up smoothly. "I will rally the troops of Chon'sin to assist your captains in the boarding of your ships, while your engineers and technology support fliers assist in fixing the issues in our own transports."

"S-Say'ri!" a normally dulcet voice rises in volume as a woman in a lab coat runs in abruptly.

"Lady Tiki?" the princess sounds surprised. "What's the matter?"

"It's become night, and as is the procedure, we opened the observatory screen to see the sky through the eye of the Blood Storm," the green-haired astronomer explains. "But the sun... though our side of the planet has been night for nearly two hours, the sky is still as bright as it was this midday!"

"But how..."

"I don't know how it grew so quickly, seemingly over day," Tiki looks deeply troubled by it. "Only that, if we deploy any ships into outer-space, the sun's radiation would utterly destroy them as soon as they exited our atmosphere. Even now, it is only the thick ozone in the Blood Storm that is keeping our planet itself shielded from the sun's rays. We could outfit the convoys with sunproof plating... but that could take months."

"What can we do, then?" Say'ri sighs, dispirited. Lucina, for her part, seems utterly stricken.

"If I may," the red-clothed elder interjects. "Before his death, your brother the prince was working on a solution for that... was he not?"

"Yes... but only the beta-testing sunshield remains on Chon'sin," Say'ri's eyes begin to mist, and Lucina aches a little bit for her own lost brother. She swallows and attempts to keep her composure, "The final invention, he took on the Amatsu and... and it failed. It backfired and killed him."

"The strength and intellect of Ylisse and Valm _both_ stand behind you now," the white-haired elder clenches a trembling fist that only implies the strength it once held in its youth. "We will not allow ourselves to be conquered by the sun!"

"Show it to me," Kjelle announces, standing as well. "If it's a launching issue, then I know guns better than the back of my hand."

"And I," Lucina agrees, grabbing said hand in her own. "Together, we shall stand and fight!"

"Da-na-na-nahhh!" Cynthia shouts. "Teamwork to the rescue!"

"All right," Say'ri, heartened, swoops towards the door, robetails fluttering in her wake. "Council is dismissed. Milady, follow me and I will show you the vessel!"

* * *

The Newhope is not an impressive starship, Severa thinks as she wheels Laurent's wheelchair in its direction. But that hardly matters when the Newhope is where Lucina's decided every engineer on the planet of Chon'sin needs to meet up, and Laurent was throwing a bitchfit about not going, and messing up his bandages because of it.

"Gawds," she sighs. "I can't believe you made the others worry about you like that, you jerkface."

"I apologize for forgetting to put on my seatbelt," Laurent explains, trying to look up at her even with his neckbrace on. "However, it is but a concussion and a few fractured limbs. It seems the half-gravity of our descent reduced the impact of my fall. A most fascinating phenomenon."

"Don't you _dare_ try to recreate it for an experiment," Severa scowls.

"I wouldn't dream of it. But, perhaps, next flight, with an egg..."

"Laurent!" shouts Cynthia, bounding over to them as soon as she's in sight. "You're okay!"

"Well, yes... woozy, but okay," Laurent answers.

"Severa..." Lucina looks vaguely relieved. "I'm glad to see you."

"Yeah, well... it's not like I wanted to come," she mumbles, blushing faintly. "But what was I supposed to do when Laurent was getting all worked up about having to answer the call? Let an injured guy have a conniption?"

"In any case, it's a good thing you're here," Kjelle casts a smirk at her. "Do you know anything about the Pegasus model? The Newhope's more than a little outdated, and barely a handful of these newbies can even find the engine."

"Are you kidding me?" Severa scoffs, tossing her hair over her shoulder. "I practically grew up in a Pegasus. I could probably build one from spare parts if I had to."

"All right, this is one of the second edition models. It's been modified a little, equipped with this thing-- that's the firing mechanism for the sunshield, try not to touch it-- instead of the standard cannons, though it looks like the original cannon mechanism has been preserved and jury-rigged for a larger barrel," Kjelle explains. "I've got a team working on that. It's mostly okay, except it looks like it's still rigged for laser-fire instead of, you know, an actual object. There are three of these barrel things, one of which contains the beta batch of whatever sunshield liquid the guy who invented this thing was working on. They have the final formulation saved to a data-pad, but nobody's been able to synthesize it as anything but a solid precipitate in a liquid solvent, instead of the full-liquid emulsification."

"What am I doing, then?" Severa scowls. "You better not be asking me to do any chemistry."

"Rig the engine. We need it to run twice as fast in order to get to the sun and back in time before the storm makes another loop around," Kjelle orders.

"You've got to be kidding me," is the immediate protest. Severa explains, "The Pegasus series was _known_ for its speed! The only reason it was ever retired was because it was a bitch to fly, and there was a crazy learning curve. This ship can go from zero to hyperspace in fifteen seconds!"

"But if we enter hyperspace, we'll crash into the sun," Kjelle frowns. "And that statistic is for low-friction space. We'll have to enter the atmosphere _twice_ to return to Chon'sin, since Pegasus fuel tanks are too small to run for more than a day without landing."

"Even for Ylisse, though," Severa argues. "The only ship in the entire galaxy that's faster than a Pegasus--"

"--is the Falchion II," they both say at the same time.

"But, if you know that," Severa entreats. "Then you know it's not possible."

"No, not normally..." admits Kjelle. "But after that storm, the Falchion II is no longer flyable. We got banged up pretty bad, and it would take months before we can even consider sending that ship back through an atmosphere, at least without risking it imploding from the pressure..."

"... so if we took the booster engines off the Falchion II and put them on this ship, it would almost double in speed," Severa realizes. She groans, "Gawds, I can't believe I'll be putting state-of-the-art engines on _this_ dingy heap."

"You'll manage," Kjelle smirks again, and presses a thick kiss to the pout of Severa's lips. "Don't disappoint me."

"I'm not planning on it," she huffs back, flicking Kjelle's armor before gathering a handful of Ylissean engineers to go disassemble her country's beloved headship.

"Kjelle, is this fixable?" Cynthia pops out of the cockpit, and though she occasionally messes with her mom's old Pegasus ship from way back when, she's never done much more than a tune-up.

The Newhope needs way, way more than a tune-up.

"What the hell is that?" Kjelle demands, looking at the charred mess of wires in Cynthia's gloved hand.

"No idea," Cynthia answers. "I found it under the dashboard. It was tangled with a bunch of other things."

"Piloting connections, then," Lucina sighs, pulling a pair of wire-strippers and a line of .05-gauge conducite from the pool of supplies. "Kjelle, I'll need you to help me weld things back to where they're supposed to be... if the piloting connections are in _that_ kind of shape, I shudder to think of the rest of the ship..."

 "Yes, ma'am," Kjelle sets the sparkers on her diagnostics kit to warm-up phase, and follows her into the chamber. This is where Lucina shines, she thinks, not in the heavy machinery that keeps the ship alight or the software that controls it, but in the tiny wires and connections that span between the two.

For a space-faring vessel, the Pegasus models are hopelessly small. There are only three chairs, one for a navigator, one for a pilot, and one for a mechanic. They are almost back-to-back, barely enough room to turn around in the chamber, and so Lucina shoos Cynthia out with an order to assist Severa with the engine.

"It looks bad," she admits, pushing the steering wheel upwards to look at the mess of wires underneath the board it's attached to. Most of the lights and levers seem intact, but she'll need to undo them to get at the real problem, one that extends underneath them. "Kjelle, do you have a screwdriver?"

"When am I ever seen without one?" Kjelle replies, turning over the supply in question.

"Kjelle, I--" the way Lucina looks at her is full of longing, thought Kjelle can't be completely certain what she's longing _for_. "Kjelle, do you think we can do this? I need you to be frank with me."

"We can fix the ship, if that's what you mean," Kjelle replies slowly. "But to fire a liquid shield into their sun? Especially one that we're not sure even works? It's not exactly going to be easy. Some of Yen'fay's techs were telling me that another in-space explosion like the one on the Amatsu could trigger the sun's implosion early, if it were of great enough strength. Loath as I am to say it, it'll take someone with a lot of luck and talent to pull this one off... skill and smarts and guts just might not be enough."

"I... I see," Lucina pauses, gently setting down the tool in her hand, ruminating deeply. She turns and at last says, "Kjelle, there's something that I want you to know. I don't think... well, I never stopped thinking of you after the cadet academy. I've never felt the same way before and... I doubt I ever shall again."

"Why are you talking like this is a goodbye?" Kjelle demands, pushing Lucina's back against the dashboard as she draws closer. "That's almost exactly what you said the... the last time we parted ways."

"Because, Kjelle, I love you," Lucina answers, boldly taking Kjelle's chin between her thumb and curled fingers. "And I am planning to take the Newhope up myself. You said yourself that the mission would be difficult to pull off, and I wanted you to know. In case."

"Don't say things like that," Kjelle breathes, pressing her lips to Lucina's and oh, how she's missed this, the princess's faintly coarse lips against her own, the ghost of misty breath that can only be described as _Lucina_. "Don't make me plan for life after your death. I'm going with you. I'll go with you even if I have to stow away in the engine room, and you'll make it out alive even if we have to move the stars themselves."

"Kjelle," Lucina's voice wavers, and the only way she can answer is with another deep kiss, long and trailing and hazy-warm like smoke.

"Come on, then," Kjelle finally manages to catch herself after a pause for breath. "Let's whip this ship into a skyworthy vessel."

* * *

 "Guns?" Kjelle hollers over the crowd of bustling mechanics.

"Guns are a-go!" answers the team leader.

"Wings?"

"Repaired and testing perfectly!" shouts another person.

"Engines?"

"Done," answers Severa, coming up behind her girlfriend. She snickers, "Who died and made you head of the project?"

"Ha," Kjelle answers with a teasing shove. "External connections?"

"Mended, and functional!"

"Internal connections?"

"Fixed," shouts Lucina from the cockpit.

"Software?"

"Updated and debugged!"

"Ammunition?"

"Loaded, and doubled," replies Tiki, her lab-coat swirling as she sways beneath the weight of carrying a second box of the swirling liquid sunshield. "Your Laurent is really quite a remarkable scientist... we had not noticed that Yen'fay originally devised the formula at a room temperature of thirty-five degrees centigrade."

"Great," sighs Kjelle. "Two shots instead of one."

"You'll want to load those via the internal ammunition airlock," she explains. "I spoke to your gun team about it, so there should be no issues."

"All right," Kjelle nods. "Princess Lucina plans to lead the flight herself. I have volunteered as on-flight engineer. We require a qualified navigator, experienced in Pegasus flight, capable of running the calculations for the forcespeed of the Blood Storm's gales on the way up for maximum evasion. Do you have any suggestions?"

"Wait, why wasn't I told about this?" demands Severa. "That's basically my exact skillset, or did you forget how I saved all of our asses landing here?"

But then Kjelle and Lucina exchange a Look with each other, and Severa knows that Look. It's the same one her parents used to use when they thought it was too dangerous for her to go on a solo-flight. The same one her mother tried to use when Severa looked at the grafted skin and scarring around Cordelia's newly-attached cybernetic hand, right after her natural one had been blown off in an assassination attempt against Lord Chrom, and proclaimed that she would take over Knightguard duties until her recovery. Kjelle, though, breaks the look, and Lucina seems somehow even sadder and more beautiful than she is normally.

"I'm telling you now," Kjelle answers at last. "You in, then?"

"It's not like I'm about to let you both go off to fight the sun _alone_ ," Severa flushes.

"I could do it," Cynthia interjects. "I mean, I'm no Laurent when it comes to computers, but--"

"No," Lucina answers firmly, pulling her aside. "Cynthia... you're barely sixteen years of age."

"Sixteen years old, but I've been working on mom's Pegasus since I could walk!" she beamed. "That's like... fifteen years of experience, way more than anyone else!"

"No, it's just..." Lucina sighs, for Cynthia just doesn't understand why her youth is so prized. "Just in case something goes wrong... I need you to carry on the legacy of the Knightguards by protecting the last of the Exalted line."

"But... if something goes wrong, won't you be... you know," Cynthia trails off, too hesitant to say the d-word.

"Yes, but... we speculate that my cousin Owain could potentially pass on the blood to future generations," Lucina confesses quietly, careful to ensure that no others are listening to her. Surely enough, most are busily tidying the liftoff area to hasten flight, so that they can leave as soon as the storm breaks.

"Lucina..." Cynthia sniffles. "I promise I won't let you down! I'll protect him with every heroic fiber I've got!"

"Thank you, Cynthia," she replies, and she feels awful for it, but at the same time, relieved. There will be a Knightguard for her cousin, and then Cynthia, the daughter of a Knightguard who had so loyally served her family for thirty years, will be safe.

"Lucina, if you're planning to come on the mission, you'd better get on this ship," Severa scowls, knowing that this stupid, self-sacrificing princess is doing her best to protect another citizen of her realm. Maybe, she thinks, it would serve her right if they just left her there and let her be the one to be protected this time.

"I'm coming," Lucina answers, leaping into the Pegasus beneath its rounded steering wing. "Are we prepared for takeoff?"

"Yeah," replies Kjelle, ducking into the engineer's seat aport. Her screens are almost the same here as on the Falchion, reading the fuel distribution and pressure levels. "Just finished reeling in the gravi-anchor."

"Turbulence readings are declining outside," says Severa at starboard, casting her gaze of haughty concern in Lucina's level. "Are you ready for this?"

With Severa's concerned love at one side, and Kjelle's confident love at the other, the only way for Lucina to answer is, "No."

And, in a fit of passion that is half desperation, she pulls Severa's lips to hers by her shoulders, and the only way Severa knows how to react is by kissing back, her teeth softly nipping Lucina's chapped lips and holding her by the waist, as if she has to make the most of the first and possibly the last kiss she'll ever share with this gorgeous, idiotic, star-born woman.

She turns, then, after a moment of heavy breathing, to find Kjelle there, too, gently cradling Lucina's cheeks and pressing a kiss to her lips, a messy one at an awkward angle, before repeating it with Severa's own. And finally, it feels like the air is cleared between them, like they understand that they're all about to fly into a sun that's threatening to implode and they're doing it because they love each other.

"Now I am ready to take off," Lucina finally pants, collapsing into her chair and pulling on her headgear. "Severa, Kjelle, I..."

"Save it for afterwards," Kjelle interjects. "So we all have something to look forward to when we get back from this. That's _when_ , not _if_."

And, Severa thinks, as the hatch opens above them, maybe this is a love story after all. The girls have all gotten the girls, and they're flying off into the sunset inside an outdated Pegasus II, and maybe there's death waiting for them at the other end but they're facing it together. And all love stories have to have a happy ending, don't they?

"Initiate the thruster engines," Lucina cries.

"Thrusters are a-go," Kjelle answers, pulling half a dozen switches. "Releasing tractor beam!"

"This is Newhope to Chon'sin Spaceport, we are prepared to launch. Keep commlinks open for further query," Lucina turns the dial on her headset.

"Storm heading starboard at one o'clock, skies are clear," Severa announces, and then they are shooting through the atmosphere, flames on their tail as they enter the thin aether of space, heading face-first into a stellar sphere of nuclear death. Her heart jumps in her throat as Lucina deftly weaves through meteoric space debris, even as Kjelle pushes the boosters to maximum, just a twitch shy of hyperspace.

 _Gods,_ she thinks, praying for real for the first time since her childhood. _Please, gods, let this be a love story._

 

[fin]

**Author's Note:**

> For the prompts:
> 
> * "lucina is so oblivious to feelings and emotions because she’s set on duty I’d love to see that explored with severa crushing something fierce and lucina just talking it for friendliness"  
> 
> * "i’d love [for Kjelle/Severa] to be explored, them getting a bit tooo competitive, a bit too mean rather than teasing and flirty, pushing each other just that bit far and for things to come crumbling down"  
> 
> * "the thing i love most about ot3s is seeing the balance that comes when all of them bring their skills to the table, so bring me that balance."
> 
> There is an entirely ridiculous amount of worldbuilding in this verse, which is hopefully not too annoying... I know you said you liked AUs and worldbuilding, so fingers crossed. :) After the de-anoning period, I might post my (probably too detailed) notes as an addendum in the series, if requested. In the meantime, have a Falchion II:  
> 


End file.
